The former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown has said his party is fighting for its existence because it has not managed to convince people it can be the home of liberal centrists.
Ahead of the Lib Dem conference this weekend, Ashdown said the party had not managed to have “one big, dangerous idea” since the coalition with the Conservative party ended in 2015. Its leader, Vince Cable, had to forge a new path for the Lib Dems to ensure they were no longer seen as the establishment, he added.
“The biggest danger for our party at the seaside next week lies in glossing over the existential challenges which now face us,” Ashdown wrote in a blog for Lib Dem Voice.
“Unless we are prepared to be realistic about where we are, return to being radical about what we propose, recreate ourselves as an insurgent force and rekindle our lost habit of intellectual ferment, things could get even worse for us.”
Ashdown said the Lib Dems under Tim Farron had failed to advance in conditions that had never been more favourable.
“The vast sea of people who share our beliefs find themselves voiceless and silent,” he said. “Not all of them, sadly, are Liberal Democrats or want to be. If we cannot, or will not, be the gathering point for these, the new left-out millions, then who will and what are we for?”
Ashdown said the party had advanced when people saw them as an outsider and he would lay out four ideas over the coming days. “Now people see us not as a force for change, but as a part of the establishment,” he wrote.
“Whether we could have been insurgents in government is a question for history. The question for now is; there is a hunger for change out there, why don’t we any longer look or sound like the people to bring it?
“There may be many reasons for that. But the biggest one is that we are doing very little new thinking and producing very few new ideas.”
Farron attempted to sell the party as the natural choice for pro-EU voters at the general election in June by promising another referendum, but the Lib Dems only gained four extra seats and 0.5% of the vote share they lost in the 2015 election.
Since taking over in July following Farron’s resignation, Cable has continued to espouse a pro-EU and pro-immigration policy.
